Burton Story Board

Best Women's All-Mountain Snowboards 2017-2018

Burton Story Board If the mountain is a blank sheet of paper, and your riding style writes your words, imagine the tales you'll tell with Burton's Storyboard. This directional camber board is new to Burton's burgeoning women's line, and is one of the stiffest female decks Burton offers. Testers gravitated to this directional camber board for its hard-charging nature. "A more aggressive rider would appreciate this board, because the flex won't be easy for everyone to manipulate... You need decent leg muscles to make this board your bitch," concluded a dominant lady ripper. With a slightly setback stance, the sidecut makes it ride like a twin, and the fish-like tail was easy to whip, while also providing a nice sink in pow. Carbon highlights throughout add to the stiffness, and many testers identified this deck as 'stable, yet responsive.' The top sheet features haunting imagery by none other than Dean Blotto Gray, making it an artsy all-mountain destroyer, built to tell your tale.

Length (cm)

147

154

Flex: 8/10

Camber: Directional hybrid--setback camber with rocker in the nose

Shape: Directional

(Flex is not standardized and differs by brand. The rating here is the best estimate of the board's flex.)

With hundreds of options available, how do you pick the best snowboard for you and your riding? The 2017-2018 Good Wood board test is a great place to start. Every board in here has been through rigorous rounds of testing in the environments it's intended for, and passed. Between the feature-filled freestyle terrain at Carinthia at Mount Snow in Vermont, and the rugged steeps of Snowbird, Utah, our eclectic and discerning testers rode and rated hundred of snowboards, ultimately concluding that these are the pinnacle of this season's freestyle and freeride offerings, respectively. Our crew is comprised of riders of riders of vastly varying sizes and backgrounds, with two commonalities: they're all experienced snowboarders with astute product knowledge. When a board stokes out the majority of this group, it means something. In addition to the park and all-mountain Good Wood accolades, we award two boards in each category with the “Bang for your Buck” designation, meaning they're the top-performers with the lowest price tags. Now in its 19th year, TransWorld SNOWboarding's Good Wood is the longest-running and most credible snowboard test on the planet.

How The Boards Are Scored

Shortly after ripping laps on each model, our testers score the board based on a comprehensive set of characteristics that include edgehold, pop, swingweight, turn initiation, stability, and flex. The scorecards for the park and all-mountain categories of the test each have unique and specific criteria designed to pinpoint the strengths and weakness of a snowboard in the setting respective to its category. Beyond the quantifiable scoring, we also ask testers to comments on each facet of the board's performance. These notes we refer to extensively when writing each review. Dive into the results and see what performed for our testers, then find what will work for you.